The history of Dutch orthography covers the changes in spelling of Dutch both in the Netherlands itself and in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in Belgium. Up until the 18th century there was no standardization of grammar or spelling. The Latin alphabet had been used from the beginning and it was not easy to make a distinction between long and short vowels (a / aa). The word jaar (year) for instance, could be spelt jar, jaer, jair, or even yaer and iaer. With the spirit of the French Revolution, attempts were made to unify Dutch spelling and grammar. Matthijs Siegenbeek, professor at Leiden, was officially asked in 1801 to draw up a uniform spelling.
This did not prove popular, however, and another attempt was made in 1844. Still not entirely satisfactory, an ambitious project was proposed in 1851 to produce a large dictionary incorporating vocabulary of the past centuries. This led to a large degree of uniformity of spelling in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Various other attempts at simplification followed, culminating in the Spelling Act of 15 September 2005. This gives the Committee of Ministers of the Dutch Language Union the authority to determine the spelling of Dutch by ministerial decision. The law requires that this spelling be followed "at the governmental bodies, at educational institutions funded from the public purse, as well as at the exams for which legal requirements have been established". In other cases, it is recommended, but not mandatory, to follow the official spelling.
Dutch spelling in the Middle Ages The Dutch spoken between 1150 and 1500 is referred to as Middle Dutch. During this period there was no standardization of grammar. Authors generally wrote in their own dialects. Very often it is possible to tell from the language whether a text comes from Limburg, Brabant, or Holland. There was a lot of variation in the spelling. Words were often written as they were pronounced: lant (land), hi vint (he finds). The sound determined the spelling, irrespective of the basic word. This is no longer the case with modern Dutch, where land is still pronounced [lant] but spelled to conform with the plural landen, and hij vindt (he finds) (still [vint]) has both d of the infinitive (vinden) and the 3rd person singular ending t. Karel ende Elegast (lines 1-6)Fraeye historie ende al waerMach ic v tellen hoort nearHet was op enen auontstontDat karel slapen begondeTengelem op den rijnDlant was alle gader sijn. From the very start of its written history, Dutch used the Latin alphabet. At first there were 23 letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, v, x, y, z. It was not until later that the j, u, and w were added.
A problem with the Latin alphabet was that it was not easy to make a distinction between long and short vowels (a / aa). Various solutions were found. At the beginning of the 13th century the word jaar (year) was spelt jar but other variants soon appeared: jaer and jair and later jaar or even yaer and iaer.
Another feature of Middle Dutch is that articles or prepositions were often joined onto the word they belonged to: (the year) and (the land), as in the accompanying fragment from Karel ende Elegast. The text translates: “I will tell you a marvelous story, and a true one. Listen! One evening Charles was sleeping in Ingelheim on the Rhine. All the land you could see was his.”
There were also regional differences. Thus a clerk in Amsterdam in the 14th century would usually write lant, but one in Utrecht would write land.
The invention of printing led to a more standardized approach.
The Siegenbeek spelling (1804, the Netherlands) With the spirit of the French Revolution pervading all areas of thought, attempts were made to unify Dutch spelling and grammar. Matthijs Siegenbeek, professor at Leiden was officially asked in 1801 to draw up a uniform spelling; the priest Petrus Weiland was asked to write a grammar book. A few years later Siegenbeek published his spelling in Verhandeling over de Nederduitsche spelling ter bevordering van de eenparigheid in dezelve (Treatise on Lower Dutch spelling to promote uniformity herein) (1804) and a Woordenboek voor de Nederduitsche spelling (Dictionary for the Dutch Spelling) (1805). The government of the Batavian Republic officially introduced Siegenbeek's spelling on 18 December 1804.
Siegenbeek thought that the spelling should reflect refined Dutch pronunciation, taking into account the uniformity, etymology, and analogy. From the Siegenbeek spelling reforms, one gets the modern Dutch ij (called lange ij (long y) as distinct from the usually identically pronounced ei, called korte ei (short ei)). The word for iron used to be written . Other spellings from Siegenbeek include: (modern Dutch: / report), ( / blue), ( / Tuesday), ( / to throw), ( / power), ( / stove), ( /kingdom), ( / music) and ( / together).
Siegenbeek's spelling never achieved real popularity. In particular the poet Willem Bilderdijk fought against it, largely out of personal spite. He produced some of his own spellings which were popular in the 1830s and 1840s including the modern (stove), (instead of /duty) and (to throw). However, other spellings of his did not last: ( / answer), ( /hair/her), ( / to receive), ( / at present) and ( / world).
The Willems spelling (1844, Belgium) In the Dutch-speaking areas in the south of the Netherlands, the Siegenbeek spelling was always unpopular. After Belgium declared independence in 1830, the spelling was denounced as “Hollandish” and “Protestant”. The spelling situation was quite chaotic with much discussion about whether to use a or ae, oo or oó, ee or eé, ei or ey, ui or uy, ambt or ampt, u or ue, and about the spelling of verbs.
In 1836, the Belgian government offered a reward for a proposal for a new spelling. In the end, the jury, headed by Jan Frans Willems, produced their own suggestion in 1839 which remained quite close to the Siegenbeek spelling in use in the Netherlands. They retained their own spelling of a few words such as kaes (cheese), ryden (to ride) and vuerig (fiery). The Willems spelling was given royal approval on 9 January 1844.
The De Vries and Te Winkel spelling (1864, Belgium; 1883, The Netherlands; 1888, South Africa)
The spelling used today both in the Netherlands and in Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) is based on an orthography originally intended only for use in a dictionary. An ambitious project was proposed in 1851 at the Taal- en Letterkundig Congres (Linguistic and Literary Congress) in Brussels at which both the Netherlands and Flanders were represented. The project aimed to produce a large dictionary: Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT) (Dictionary of the Dutch Language), incorporating vocabulary of the past centuries.
There was a problem with this project: which spelling was to be used for the dictionary? There were three spelling systems in use at the time: the Willems spelling in Belgium, the Siegenbeek spelling in the Netherlands, and several variants of Bilderdijk's system. It would have been unacceptable to have used a mixture of these systems. In addition, the Siegenbeek system did not address certain issues such as when compounds were to be written as one word or the interpolation of letters in between. It was proposed to create a special dictionary spelling.
This spelling was established by the linguists Matthias de Vries and L.A. te Winkel. In 1863 Te Winkel published the results in De grondbeginselen der Nederlandsche spelling. Ontwerp der spelling voor het aanstaande Nederlandsch Woordenboek (The foundations of Dutch spelling. Project for the spelling of the forthcoming Dutch Dictionary). The spelling of De Vries and Te Winkel combined elements of the three current systems, providing a much needed solution to the chaos. By 21 November, the decision was accepted by a royal decree in Belgium. In 1866 De Vries and Te Winkel produced Woordenlijst voor de spelling der Nederlandsche taal (Vocabulary for the spelling of the Dutch language), which can be seen as a precursor of today's Groene Boekje (Green Booklet).
The Netherlands was slower in accepting the De Vries and Te Winkel spelling. Schools continued to use the Siegenbeek spelling until 1870, and in government circles it was not until 1883 that the new spelling started to be used. The De Vries and Te Winkel spelling eventually led to a large degree of uniformity of spelling in the Netherlands and Belgium.
The De Vries and Te Winkel spelling was introduced to the South African Republic (Transvaal) in 1888, after Dutch was declared to be the sole official language of the country by a constitutional amendment.
The Kollewijn Spelling (1906, South Africa) Teachers and linguists continued to object to certain features of the spelling. It was thought that too great an emphasis was being given to etymology. For instance, was spelt differently in lzen ("to read", single e in open syllable for ) and in hten ("to be called", double e in open syllable for the same ). This reflected the etymological distinction between "sharp-long" e (from Old Dutch long ē) and "soft-long" e (from Old Dutch short e and i that were lengthened in open syllables). However, the etymological reasoning was hard to teach, as the distinction was not made by most Dutch speakers anymore.
produced an article in 1891 Onze lastige spelling. Een voorstel tot vereenvoudiging (Our difficult spelling: a proposal for simplification). He emphasized the need for spelling to relate to pronunciation, therefore mensch (person/human) and Nederlandsch ought to become mens and Nederlands, respectively. Russisch (Russian) he thought should be spelt Russies and moeilijk (difficult) moeilik. Heeten would be written heten, but lezen would stay the same. However, academics from the Netherlands and Flanders challenged Kollewijn's proposals with the argument that said proposals would break down "the unity of the Dutch language" and would make it too "vulgar".
In South Africa, however, there was no such opposition to Kollewijn's proposals. This was due to the fact that by the end of the 19th century, many Afrikaners viewed Dutch as a difficult language to write, and as a consequence, there was a movement among many Dutch-language promoters in the South African states and colonies to simplify Dutch as a written language.
This movement came from the Zuid-Afrikaansche Taalbond (South African Language Association), as well as from teachers and journalists in the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (both of which had Dutch as an official language). The Language Association was founded in 1890 to promote the knowledge and usage of "the people's language", which was decided by 47 votes to 36 votes would be the Dutch language, as opposed to Afrikaans. The members of the Language Association came to realize that Dutch would be in a much stronger position to compete with the English language in South Africa if its spelling were to be simplified, and so convened a joint conference of Afrikaners from the Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal to suggest simplification of the written Dutch language in the direction of Kollewijn's proposals.
After the Second Boer War, the conference met again in Stellenbosch on 23 January 1903, and reaffirmed the simplification of Dutch orthography. The conference asked Willem Viljoen (a professor of language at Victoria College (the modern-day Stellenbosch University) and a member of the Language Association) to prepare a report on simplification. Viljoen consulted linguists and experts from the Netherlands and Flanders, and on 19 September 1903, the Commissie voor Taal en Letteren bij de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te Leiden (the Commission for Language and Literature in Leiden at the Society for Dutch Literature) held a meeting which twenty professors attended.